The weather being a chaotic system, one cannot expect even similar-looking patterns to evolve in the same way each time.
Failing safe is still failing. A lesson I learned as a junior officer.
Indeed. Long term weather forecasting is quite literally what started the study of chaotic & non-linear systems.
They had to balance the consequences of delay, which would have been considerable, against pressing on with the landing. In the absence of a strong prediction of storms, it’s hard to see what else they could have done.
While watching the movie, I was unfamiliar with Stagg’s rank of “Group Captain” in the Royal Air Force (RAF). I assumed it was the same as a U.S. Army captain, but it is instead equivalent to a full colonel.
That explains why Lt. Col. Krick of the U.S. Army Air Forces didn’t try to pull rank on him. He was actually outranked by Stagg.